BMW i3: Can I Fit My Bass In The Boot?

We are looking to add a new BMW to our family and have been very interested in the BMW i3 to act as a family shuttle around town. We, however, have a unique requirement for our future family vehicle. My daughter plays the Bass in orchestra at school, so this means we get to shuttle her massive stringed animal around rather quite frequently. Currently it gets shuttled about in a BMW X3 which works great, but were interested in an all electric conveyance.

Enter the 2014 BMW i3, a five-door car with a big looking boot. I envisioned that the i3 would fit the three quarters of a Bass. Plus I wanted to so see how it fits in the garage and how hard it would be to stuff the big Bass in it. Fortunately I was able to convince my local BMW dealer, Baron BMW, to let us take one home to put it to the Vossler family acid test.

Once we got it home, popped the hatch, took the back deck lid out and layer the seats down. The seats have two cloth pulls that you can grab from either the boot side or the angle of the seat back and bottom cushion. Once the seats are laid down, there is a very large open flat surface. Lifting the Bass up, I notice that the level of the storage are of the i3 is rather high. This made placing the behemoth up in the boot rather easy. As it slid forward, the neck of the Bass looked like it might be a problem. Not so thankfully! The neck slid easily between the two seats. As the loading surface of the i3 is so high, there was no torque placed on the Bass neck.

BMW i3 – The Bass Fitment Test

Our interest in the fully electric i3 has to do with our short daily driving, so the BEV version makes sense for us. For those with longer commutes there is a BMW i3 REx which comes with a rear-mounted 650cc, 34 hp, two-cylinder, gasoline- powered Range Extender generator is available, which roughly doubles the vehicle’s range. When the battery gets to a certain level, the Range Extender starts and maintains the battery’s current state of charge.

BMW i3 – The Bass Fitment Test

The all electric i3 has a 22 kWh lithium-ion battery with about a 80 mile range. It has been tested as the most efficient electric car on the market in good part due to its low weight with extensive use of carbon fiber reinforced plastic at 124 MPGe. The Range Extender version never directly drives the vehicle’s wheels and adds roughly 330 lbs to the vehicle curb weight, and has a fuel capacity of just 1.9 gallons.

Pricing (before federal or local incentives) starts at $45,200 for the i3 Range Extender model and $41,350 for the pure electric i3. The i3 is on sale now.

This “article” reads like an advertisement rather than a viable piece of journalism.

The bass part is the hook…yet the rest is pure promo – and the same facts about the i3
we all know 63 times over.

This person, as a present BMW owner, may be a big fan of the brand, but I see no substance here in the information purveyed that requires an entire “article”.

Tom M’s posts are just the opposite. Even though he is a big BMW guy, and we all know this, at least, as an i3 owner, he gives us new perspective and even insight on i3’s shortcomings.

Listen folks, we can all be biased, and sure, some of us have been guilty of putting
lipstick on a pig…but this car lacks the versatility of a Chevy Volt, even with it’s optional very pricey tiny range extender. Even the author conveys it is best a city car. A very, very, very expensive one.

So what do you get for your $50,000? According to puff pieces like this, we should not balk at the price because i3 is so lightweight. Again it is not made of carbon fiber. Instead it is an aluminum frame topped by a plastic body. The molded plastic parts are covered by a glued-on layer of carbon fiber. This leads common folk to say the car is made of cf thus justifying the price. Even if the vehicle was made of this expensive and labor-intensive material, it’s resulting benefit should be value to the consumer. Instead, the main result of all this weight reduction is more financial gain to BMW. The consumer is told he/she is gaining value, yet what we have here is a city car that seats four ( or two + one bass ) with a realistic warm/cold climate range of 70-80 miles.

This great effort at weight reduction results in the ability of BMW to use a smaller battery pack, resulting in savings to….BMW.

OK, you still label me some “negative Nancy” instead of a voice of reason. I am trying to save you some money as there are common options out there for you for much less dough.

Let’s forget i3’s quirky, impractical and annoying rear doors and looks only a mother could love. Maybe you’re just a big BMW fan and, like myself, you have more money than brains. Hey, I say, knock yourself out – buy
the thing and make your short drives electric. Have an alternative ICE’d rig for
longer drives. Just don’t sound like this article and tell everyone how smart it is.

It’s an interesting vehicle, worthy of discourse, yet i3 is surely not the wunderkind some make it out to be. In fact, besides it’s glaring limitations and high price, there is no data on just how much it will cost the consumer to repair it’s proprietary CFRP bodywork.

Aaron: I recently fit a very large portable a/c unit into my I-Miev. There was so much space that I actually was able to fold the seats back up and it fit just in the “trunk”. That I did not expect. The I3 looks to have even more room in there.

Phil: Correct. EVs are still a niche topic. We do discuss some prettty arcane stuff.

James: A little harsh, although I get your point. Tom’s articles are much more objective, but even so, the decision to buy a car is in many ways subjective. The real value of the article to me was that we saw the trunk of the I3. I’d cut the writer a break, he loves his car, that’s fine. In regards to the pricing of the I3 and its utility and value, well, that is such a personal decision. I almost certainly will never buy a BMW of any type…they are just out of my price range so I only pay attention to them in regards to technological developments and such. This may not be the supercar that some people want to make it out to be, but it does look to be a very nice addition to the EV world.

my objection is that many of these look like sham reviews. i have noticed the regularity with which articles about the BMW i3 use the word “beautiful” to describe various interior and exterior aspects of the car. it makes me suspect that BMW is telling their “ambassadors” to repeatedly use the word “beautiful” in an attempt to convince people that a rather odd-looking car is somehow actually “beautiful”.

it’s not that it is such a big deal that the BMW i3 is an odd-looking car, after all, there are a lot of odd-looking vehicles on the road (although most are less than half the price of the BMW i3)…but what i say is: stop shamming!

I absolutely love EVs. I endorse anything with a plug over anything without one. I do believe all the hype of this car needs to be countered. Why? Because the debate ANY product ignites is: Is this product superior or worthy of it’s price, cost of ownership and utility vs. it’s competitive options?

I welcome debate, and feel my observations are valid.

Everyone has to weigh their buying triggers. “Is it an emotional buy, or is my rationale valid?”, etc..

I also feel Americans have a responsibility to consider if their major purchase benefits our economy or not. Volt; LEAF; C-Max; Fusion Energi; Focus EV; Tesla = Made
in USA. Carbon fiber thread that goes into i3 is produced in my state – yet it is a tiny portion of the car as a whole.

In the past, I gave no heed to American-made because in those days a car made in USA meant junk. Today is a different story and
we know that along with EVs comes environmental responsibility, national security responsibility and considerations of economic benefit to our nation. It’s not just about personal savings at the pump.

Americans who buy electric think about this stuff. EV’ers are thinking people – thus, this type of discourse, me thinks, is not too harsh at all.

…Plus, this i3 post is an ad…I particularly like the “i3 is on sale now!”, kicker at the end!

To InsideEVs, I suggest a bit more screening of articles unless one wishes to appear biased.

This article comes directly from BMWBLOG, a website that is in no way associated with BMW the automaker. We have a working relationship with BMWBLOG, as well as with other websites. The word “boot” comes from me, meaning that when I put the title on the article I choose to use the word “boot.” And no, I’m not European.

What I wondered is how the parents + daughter + bass can fit in the car. As placed, they’d have to take a 2nd vehicle or the X3 with just one of the back seats down (which I guess would fit). But, maybe that’s never done, or rarely enough that the i3 still passes the “bass fitment test”. (What are you guys, German? That’s not the right English use of “fitment”, I don’t think ;).)